Dave McNeely: It's time to address legislators' compensation

The special session Gov. Rick Perry called on redistricting and other matters got some publicity because most legislators were collecting their $150 per day per diem — even though they were back home in their districts, or somewhere else, for much of it.

It’s perfectly legal, and as some point out, those with apartments in Austin have to pay for them even when they’re not here. However, some legislators chose to collect only for the days when they were actually in Austin.

That fact, coupled with legislators increasing their retirement benefits during the regular legislative session, helped underline the tangled system for compensating lawmakers.

We pay them $600 a month, or $7,200 a year. That hasn’t increased since 1975 when, after a couple of failures, voters finally passed a constitutional amendment to raise them from $4,800.

In 1991, during establishment of the Texas Ethics Commission, voters also approved a constitutional amendment to continue legislators’ pay at $600 a month — unless the new commission recommended higher wages, and voters approved. So far, that hasn’t happened.

Texas voters for the most part hang on to the notion that their lawmakers should be part-timers. Meet for 140 days in a regular session in odd-numbered years. Then go back home and live under the laws they passed. Earn a living like everybody else.

The problem is that they get called back for special sessions. They have committee meetings and other duties both in Austin and at home when the Legislature is not in session. And they are expected to attend a lot of functions and otherwise be available to the folks in their districts.

So legislators, sort of in self-defense, avoided pegging their retirement benefits to their own meager salaries. Instead, legislators began decades ago basing their retirement as a percentage of the salary for district judges.

In the recently concluded 2013 regular legislative session, legislators relatively quietly increased their retirement benefits 12 percent, by hiking the pay for district judges from $125,000 to $140,000. Lawmakers have to serve eight years to qualify for retirement benefits, which they can begin collecting at age 60.

If they serve 12 or more years, they can start collecting retirement benefits at age 50.

The system awards a retiring legislator with an annual benefit of 2.3 percent of a judge’s salary for each year of service. With the 12 percent pay hike for the judges, they’ll now get an extra $3,220 for each year of service.

A legislator with eight years service now will get $25,760 a year.

State Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, who served six years as Speaker of the House, is the longest-serving member of the Legislature. He was elected in 1968, began his tenure in 1969.

If he retired at the end of his current term — with 46 years — his annual retirement calculation would be $148,120. However, the law also says the per-year retirement benefit can’t exceed the judge’s salary — $140,000, beginning Sept. 1.

When this periodic judicial pay bracket creep occurs, and has the impact of raising legislative retirement, retired teachers look on with awe — and not a little resentment. While their salaries were certainly higher than the $7,200 a year paid legislators, their per-year retirement benefits are much less, since they’re based on their own salaries, not those of judges.

My plan is this: Raise legislative salaries to that of a beginning teacher — or even to the average Texas teacher wage. And then calculate legislative retirement on their actual wages, just as teachers do.

It would shrink their retirement benefits, but could raise the pay for legislators while they’re actually serving to $30,000 or more a year. And I’ll bet it would give legislators incentive to raise teacher salaries — which they should.

Also, drop the minimum number of years for legislators to qualify for retirement from eight to four. For a House member who serves two-year terms, that would mean if voters made a mistake in electing him or her, they at least did it twice.

That might induce legislators who are burned out from hanging around for eight years just to qualify for retirement benefits. Of course, since retirement benefits would be less lucrative, that may be incentive enough to move on.

In addition to wisely raising the pay for both teachers and legislators, this also could allow teachers to run for the Legislature without having to go on food stamps if they win. They’d still be making a teacher’s wage, and their retirement benefits wouldn’t be affected.

This probably is about as likely to happen as Texas passing an income tax. But it would be interesting to see if the Ethics Commission proposed this whether Texas voters might think it’s a good idea and go along.